Month: March 2016

Restaurant Automation Is Almost a Guarantee

Restaurant Automation Is Almost a Guarantee

Consumer preferences, reduced technology costs, and government policies that increase labor costs are driving a trend toward automation in the restaurant business. If you make something more convenient and less expensive, it tends to catch on. This can also be said for the way the restaurant looks, a new structure/design can make people notice a new restaurant. An example of this is that there are now modular restaurants (https://bmarkostructures.com/modular-restaurants/) that can be made from shipping containers and designed in a specific manner rather than just a building. This can be intriguing and make people want to see what it is all about, combining that with updated automation it can bring in customers who love a modern eatery that satiates their food cravings and is aesthetically pleasing.

As recently as the 1960s, gas-station employees would rush to fill your car’s tank, wash the windows, check the oil and put air in the tires. Telephone operators made your long-distance calls and bank tellers cashed your checks. Those jobs now are either gone or greatly diminished.

Today, we reduce jobs whenever we shop on Amazon instead of our local retail outlet, use an Uber app rather than calling a cab dispatcher, order a pizza online, use an airport kiosk to print boarding passes, or scan groceries. Each of these changes in behavior has increased convenience and reduced labor costs-and competitive businesses pass the savings to their customers.

Just like there are kiosks replacing airline workers that check you in to your flight, the restaurant industry is ripe for order automation.

I fly a lot. Several airports have already automated their restaurants. In the Delta concourse (most of C & D) LaGuardia LGA, every seat with a table or counter has an iPad and a card reader in front of it. You order anything you want on the iPad from any of the restaurants in the concourse and it gets delivered to your table. They serve thousands of people simultaneously with a fairly small wait staff. Those businesses that haven’t already automated their restaurant may want to visit this page, as this looks like the direction the hospitality industry is heading.

In fact, Minneapolis MSP has a similar setup in several of the remodeled areas.

When was the last time you walked into a bank to get some cash for the weekend? The ATM has been a fixture in the banking world for decades now. That automation has increased to include scanning checks on your smartphone, so even paper checks are no longer a reason to walk into a bank building.

In 2015, 14 cities and states approved $15 minimum wages-double the current federal minimum. Additionally, four states, 20 cities and one county now have mandatory paid-sick-leave laws generally requiring a paid week of time off each year per covered employee. And then there’s the Affordable Care Act, which further raises employer costs.

Dramatic increases in labor costs have a significant effect on the restaurant industry, where profit margins are pennies on the dollar and labor makes up about a third of total expenses. As a result, restaurants are looking to reduce costs while maintaining service and food quality.

Part of the problem is that those with technical skills make good livings, while those who don’t have those skills are being priced out of entry-level jobs.

The low-labor concept may be a harbinger of the future. If consumers prefer it, or if government-mandated labor-cost increases drive prices too high, the traditional full-service restaurant model, like those old gas stations with the employees swarming over your car, could well become a thing of the past.

Source: Why Restaurant Automation Is on the Menu

The Costs of Mass Deportation

The Costs of Mass Deportation

One of the more foolish statements of Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump (the two least qualified candidates in the race) is their love of saying that they would deport anyone here illegally. I am sorry but I simply do not want to pay that much in taxes to do that and if their supporters could actually use a calculator, they wouldn’t want it either.

My gut is that Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump would both renege on this campaign promise. Mr. Trump calls Mr. Cruz “Lying Ted” in this regard, Mr. Trump is correct but the bad news is that Lying Ted should call the Republican nomination current leader, Lying Donald. Thank goodness Mr. Kasich understands how to do math and has a reasonable agenda.

After the roundups, where would the arrested millions await their hearings? The feds currently operate about 250 detention facilities with 34,000 beds, and a mere 58 immigration courts. The average detention time is 28.7 days. To keep that same detention time, a two-year deportation plan would require some 348,831 beds, as well as more than 1,300 courts and about 30,000 more federal attorneys. The effort would be a full-employment act for lawyers, and no doubt the House Freedom Caucus would be overjoyed to pay for all of those new federal employees.

Then there’s the task of sending migrants back to their native countries. Only about half of the 11.3 million hail from nearby Mexico, so the U.S. would have to fly millions to Central America, Asia and elsewhere. The effort would demand the departure, on average, of 84 buses and 47 chartered flights every day for two years. Is the Trump 757 available?

Source: The Costs of Mass Deportation

A Bernie Sanders supporter called me last night

A Bernie Sanders supporter called me last night

I live in Ohio, so I wasn’t surprised that last night I received a call asking me to support a Presidential candidate. I was surprised that the candidate was Bernie Sanders.
I almost felt sorry for him but in the end, I did suggest that when he hung up that he should leave the volunteer center and go home and stop trying to ruin America now that he had received a lesson in economics and voting record.

What I was most amazed at was that this young man thought that Bernie Sanders would “fix Wall Street.” I wasn’t surprised that the young man liked Bernie’s call for socialized healthcare and extremely high minimum wages. We discussed these topics for several minutes, and I explained economics to him, but it didn’t surprise me that the young man liked Bernie’s ideas – after all, who doesn’t want something for nothing! However, the uninformed young man didn’t realize that when it came to Wall Street, Bernie is quite simply lying when he says that he will “fix it” simply because the fixes that Bernie already supported CAUSED the financial crisis that has hurt so many people. In fact, I am simply amazed that any low to middle-income person in the US would want to support Mr. Sanders simply because his lack of judgment has hurt so many poor people already.

bernie sanders photoThe caller had no knowledge that Mr. Sanders actually voted FOR the legislation that ultimately caused the “too big to fail” banks and limited the regulation of financial derivatives (the Financial Services Modernization Act) that was passed under Bill Clinton. He was also completely uninformed that this massive bill that dramatically changed banking in the US was primarily supported by Democrats (and Mr. Sanders as an Independent) while the majority of the Republicans voted against it. That is correct, the party of those that will “fix Wall Street” are primarily the ones that “broke Wall Street”. For those that are keeping score, Republicans 58-131, Democrats 182-1, Independent (Sanders) 1-0.

The young man was also uninformed as to the second major contributor to the financial crisis of 2008. That was The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. This act forced home loans to people that were very unlikely to pay back the loan. This created the bad loans which then the banks wanted to sell to get them off their books which caused the problems because of lack of control in the Sanders’ supported Financial Services Modernization Act. Mr. Sanders also voted for The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. In fact, so did 95% of the Democrat Congressman. Unfortunately, the Republicans are not as clean on this as 75% also supported this ill-fated bill.

In true transparency, Mr. Kasich was also serving at that time, and he voted for The Housing and Community Development Act and voted against the Financial Services Modernization Act. Mr. Cruz was too young to hold federal office. Mr. Rubio was too young to hold national office. Mr. Trump was not in public office and was probably dealing with his first of several bankruptcies which occurred at about this time. Ms. Clinton did not hold public office at that point, but was the First Lady and likely supported both bills as they were both signed by her husband, President Bill Clinton.

What is the lesson to be learned here? There are two. The first is that Bernie Sanders had a helping hand in creating the situation that caused the 2008 financial crisis so saying he can now fix it is a stretch of the imagination. The second lesson is that if you are going to call me to have me support your candidate, be prepared to have to defend the candidate with solid facts and reasoning otherwise it won’t be an enjoyable phone call for you (even though I will probably enjoy it immensely).

Photo by origamidon